Author: {Some18mysandwich} | Story Link: {5:17 AM}
It's 5:17 AM, Tuesday, December 16th and I'm trying to figure out why I'm here, contemplating what went wrong.
I'm driving to work this morning, the road dimly lit and only a few cars on it today. I commute roughly an hour to work each day, and I must punch in by 5:45 AM. This morning I'm late. I rushed out of bed at 4:46 this morning, took a quick, 3 minute shower, got dressed and left the house at 5:00 sharp, my hair still wet and unkempt. As I leave my subdivision, I see an off white family van speed past as though it owned the streets; you know, the type of van a soccer mom would own. I figure it must've been one of those crazy suburban moms driving their kid to school, but probably to tell the principle that they're responsible for her child's F in English. Whatever, I didn't care. But I was curious as to why they're speeding, so I followed them.
Following immediately behind them I gained speed, gradually catching up to their car. I keep driving until I'm almost completely parrellel to them. The van looked fairly new. A small dent on the right rear bumper, those stickers you put on your car on the back windshield that represent members of your family. A father, a mother, two sons, and a dog. There was a scratch in between the last son and the dog, though. It looked like someone tried really hard to scrape off a sticker but to no avail. A daughter, it looked like.
I pulled up closer to the front windows but I couldn't see the driver. My pickup was slightly higher up off the ground and all I could see was a dark figured body sitting in the driver's seat. They wore a black cloak, but I couldn't tell what gender they were. The figure was relaxed and leaned back in the seat, almost like they were enjoying the ride. Then I looked in the backseat. It was dark back there but I could just barely make out a human figure in the shadows. Child, girl, leaned up against the side of the door in a rather peculiar position. I stared at her, trying to see who she was and what she was doing. Then the car passed a street lamp. A short stream of light glimmered across her face.
I caught a glimpse of what I could imagine was a once beautiful face that was now brutally mangled. Chunks of bloody flesh and tissue drooped from her chin and cheekbones. Nose gone, one ear dangling from the left side of her head, shards of glass and pebbles pierced her skin, and teeth were showing, but not of a smile. It looked like she had maybe been dragged across pavement or skid on it. She was dead, or hardly hanging in there. I cupped my mouth and nearly let out a loud scream. Then I crashed.
In horror of what I had just seen, my eyes did not dare look away, and my focus was not fixated on the road.
It was 5:16.
Directly ahead of me was a black coupé that had stopped at a red light. At this point I was going 55 on a 40 when I hit him. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the pavement, approximately 20 or 30 feet away from my truck and the thing's in pieces, completely totaled, same goes for the coupé. I didn't wear my seatbelt as I felt I was such a great driver that I had no need to. How arrogant I was.
Then I woke up in a groggy state.
It is now 5:17 AM, I am looking at my own reflection in the window and I can't move. My face is mangled, nose gone. one ear dangling, shards of glass and pebbles in my face, and my teeth are showing but I'm not smiling. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man in a silk black cloak, driving me to my end. And out of the window I see the souls of all the deceased and those who will soon be deceased. The damned scream at the top of their lungs, they are being punished for their arrogance and selfishness, ignorance and stupidity, and for hurting the souls of the living while they were alive. I too am being punished for my sinful deeds. That's why I'm here, sitting in the backseat of this car, in a timeless realm where death is just an illusion.
I can see them now, the lives soon to be taken from earth and brought down to this fiery dungeon where they will be condemned to eternal pain and suffering, feeling the pain of which they caused countless of others, over and over again. I see a woman in her car, talking on her phone, curious to see why I'm in the backseat of this car. Little did she know she was on the highway to hell.
